The Crossfire rules includes a Stalingrad scenario. I’ve reproduced it here mainly because I wanted a map that was scaled to match my 3″x3″ Generic Building Sectors rather than the 4″x4″ sectors of the original. I’ve taken the liberty to embellish the scenario a bit.

My thoughts on Using Big Base Liberators Figures of 1817-18 for 1815 highlighted a few gaps that I needed to fill before I could refight Sipe Sipe. I could use some figures from my Royalists of 1817 and 1818 but there were a fair few units that didn’t have a direct equivalent. That gave me an excuse to get some more. Okay, it isn’t hard to convince me to get more figures – in this case it just took some fancy uniforms that aren’t seen in other years of the Wars of South American Liberation.

I have rebased my 1818 Royalists on big bases, so I took the opportunity to do a photo shoot including some units I’d not featured before. This is the army that won at the Battle of Cancha Rayada (19 March 1818) and lost to San Martin at the Battle of Maipo (5 April 1818). For those interest in the earlier armies I’ve also got the Royalist army for 1817.

I play wargames. Emphasis on “games”. So when I design a new scenario I look for three things. The scenario must result in a game that is fun, fair and has flavour. The 3Fs of scenario design. For this post I’ll use Crossfire examples but the same principles apply to any game system.

I’m thinking of using Basic Impetus for the next game in our Fall of Hispania Campaign. The good news is that the army lists for the Fall of Rome period are freely available at Vol 7. Rome and Empire and Vol 8. Fall of Rome. The bad news is I don’t like them. Firstly, I can’t read them because of all the abbreviations, for example, “FP” does not leap out at me as “Heavy Infantry”. Secondly, the format of the table is counter intuitive for me; I want to know who the troops are first before seeing how they are

Back in June 2012 Andrew Fisher played my Russian Scouts scenario. Admittedly he did changed the theatre of operations, hence participants, and had the Axis attacking. In his game it was German recon troops probing a US position in Tunisia. Andrew published an after action report on the Crossfire Forum and I’ve reproduced it here with his permission. The battle report is Andrew speaking and I make a few follow up points.

I’m thinking of using Basic Impetus for the next game in our Fall of Hispania Campaign. The good news is that the army lists for the Fall of Rome period are freely available at Vol 7. Rome and Empire and Vol 8. Fall of Rome. The bad news is I don’t understand them.

“This is a cracking scenario”. Mark Bretherton played my SU-152s Up Close and Personal scenario for Crossfire. The words below are Mark’s unless indicated otherwise. Aside from the after action report itself, Mark explains the house rules he used for this scenario and muses on potential house rules for attacking buildings and bunkers.

I was talking to John Fletcher and he mentioned most people who play Liberators choose the 1817-18 campaign, like I did. So I’m determined to refight other battles, hopefully all of them eventually. But to start with here is a catalogue of the scenarios.

Summary: Chris, playing Kampfgruppe Masarie, recreated history and secured the body of Papa Eicke and his insignia and consequently won the game. However, he did this at the cost of a half his armoured fighting vehicles. The scenario had the right elements but could do with some tweaking.

A couple of years ago I put my few Peninsular War figures on big bases. Some French Dragoons and various Spanish new battalions. Now that I’m trying to finish my Albuera project I’m going to supplement these with more figures. Before I do that I have to decide, exactly, how to deal with the company distinctions of the various nations. The French, who gave each company in the battalion, including the fusilier companies, pose particular challenges.

After reading my post on Infantry Unit Frontages during WW2 John Carper kindly sent through his notes on US unit frontages. The material is from a 1950 source, “Landing Party Manual – United States Navy”, but is probably indicative of late WW2 USMC doctrine. The manual presents guidelines from the fire team to battalion levels for employment of riflemen and MGs (unfortunately no other support weapons are discussed).